


Street

by artreactor



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Age Difference, Blood, Consent Issues, Death, F/M, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Murder, Power Imbalance, Self-Hatred, Suicidal Thoughts, Victim Blaming, Violence, butchery mention, disturbing thoughts/imagery, jake blames himself a lot for things, possible gore, suicide baiting, the poem is disturbing too so, unhealthy relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-17
Updated: 2015-03-17
Packaged: 2018-03-18 08:12:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 894
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3562535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/artreactor/pseuds/artreactor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"He fell in love with the butcher's daughter."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Street

**Author's Note:**

> Poem by Eilean Ni Chuilleanain, poem titled the same as this fanfiction

_"He fell in love with the butcher’s daughter_  
_When he saw her passing by in her white trousers_  
_Dangling a knife on a ring at her belt._  
_He stared at the dark shining drops on the paving-stones._

_One day he followed her_  
_Down the slanting lane at the back of the shambles._  
_A door stood half-open_  
_And the stairs were brushed and clean,_  
_Her shoes paired on the bottom step,_  
_Each tread marked with the red crescent_  
_Her bare heels left, fading to faintest at the top."_

 

 

 

The first thing he notices is her teeth.

Sharp, pointy, ever so slightly uneven, sticking out of her mouth like she can't quite close blue painted lips over them. He would never judge. His own teeth are wonky, bucked and overgrown but they're oh so blunt. They don't do much damage as he bites down on his cheek, obvious indent from where they rest on his lower lip.

She's like a spider, a vampire, a lioness. The sort of face that makes him want to hold her hand and the kind of precision that makes him want her to dig her black nails in while she's holding him.

He wakes to a bruise forming on the back of his head but no blood and is too dazed to think about what his disappointment might mean.

 

 

She's fascinating.

She can talk for hours but all he wants is to watch her lips move. Cerulean coloured, her top lip comes into two final points, drawn into a welcoming smile that frames those teeth.

Those teeth.

He's watching her lips but he's watching her teeth. Final points, razor sharp. Her tongue glides along them sometimes while she's thinking of what to tell him next and he's enraptured by them. They do not leave indents on her lower lip, do not cut her tongue to spill blue blood.

He bets they'd cut him though. She's promised him death's kiss and he's not sure if he wants to wait that long for it; the kiss nor death. He doesn't want to grow old, to disappoint Hepburn by not being Dean. She talks like he's invincible and like it's a good thing and then in the same breath wishes him dead and it's enchanting.

The damage she could do with those teeth. How they would look, stained red like his own after brushing, after pulling, after punching. His lip might scar over but he would never leave well enough alone. Would she leave scratch marks or puncture holes at the base of his neck?

She stops speaking and he draws his attention to her eyes but by God if they aren't sharp too.

 

 

The closer he gets to eternity, the more appetising death seems.

She's alive and he can't bear it, her nails digging into his skin but not enough to break it and water teasing the ends of his eyelashes but not enough to break the floodgates.

It's confusion. He usually does not want to register what she's saying but suddenly he realises that he can't, can't do anything but watch her lips, those teeth, as they teeter forward, inches, centimetres, millimetres.

Enlightenment shouldn't hurt as much as he wants it to.

It's not death's kiss, it's lifes kiss and by god if he suddenly doesn't want it. Maybe he's confused, maybe he's traumatised, maybe everything he wants always looks so much better when it's an unattainable dream and not a brash reality. Maybe he just loves danger.

His refusal brings on an even sharper gaze that makes her teeth look blunt and her nails look filed. Makes the ends of her dress look like frills.

Enlightenment hurts more than he thought.

 

 

White light pierces through his gaze and his mind and if this is what intelligence feels like, he doesn't want it. If this is what living feels like, he was right all along.

It pierces like it's sharp, but not in a way that makes him bleed. It's in the way that makes his head spin, vertigo, drawing screams but not shallow breaths.

The fork does that for him.

He falls.

 

 

When he wakes he is no less confused.

Death is something he has tasted thrice and it takes him moments, heartbeats, staring at his hands to realise that possibly he may not want it again. Living is a means of proving himself, of atoning and possible the newest form of escapism since wishing himself dead.

He runs.

He follows the footsteps of the pirates of neverland until he reaches the swinging pendulum he has searched for and miraculously avoided for so long.

She's never killed him before.

She doesn't grant his wish this time either.

The word stop does not manage to fall from his lips and neither to the pleas that had been circling around his fuzzed mind along the way. Pain is something familiar but was it quite this sharp before?

He can see her standing eight feet away but it feels like her nails are digging pins and needles into his stomach and her teeth are piercing his neck. Not scratch marks: puncture holes.

His gaze is white light and the pendulum swings and he watches her mouth.

She does not smile and her teeth still do not pierce her bottom lip.

He looks down from white to see red. This time he is not disappointed.


End file.
